This tutorial is intended to users who have dual boot systems and want to change the default operating system to load when starting your computer or server.

In this scenario, I have a computer with one disk, and have installed two operating systems in this disk, first one being Windows Server 2003 Standard and second one being Mircrosoft Windows XP Professional. When I boot up my computer, it automatically boots to windows xp, but i want to change it so it boots server 2003 instead by default. When I start my computer this is what the boot loading screen says:

     Code:
The first step to do is to go ahead and login to windows xp.

2. After windows XP has been loaded, login as user with administrator privilages.

3. Click on the Start Menu (bottom left of the screen)

4. Then Select Run


5. A small popup will appear. Type the following: C:boot.ini

(in my example C is the drive where I have installed windows Xp)

6. Click Ok

7. If you are asked to choose a program to open the file with, Select "Select the program from a list" and browse and select notepad


8. Once you have opened boot.ini with notepad the file contents will look like this:

     Code:

Now Change to This:

     Code: * I basically changed the 1 to 2 in the third line
from: default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS
to: default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)WINDOWS

9. Save your changes and close the boot.ini file

10. Restart your computer / server.

11. Now when you restart, windows XP will start by default instead of windows server 2003